


Your Wonderful Life

by whipplefilter (kalliel)



Category: Cars (Movies), Disney - All Media Types
Genre: Dissociation, Emotional Trauma, F/M, It's a Wonderful Life, Medical Trauma, Movie: Cars 3, post-crash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-09-05 21:36:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,815
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16818925
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalliel/pseuds/whipplefilter
Summary: Everyone is fine without you,Lightning realizes. Everything is different, but that's all it is. Just different.No. Not just different.Sally's in the tent with Fillmore again, smoke curling out from the bottom. They're together every night, because Fillmore is here every night, because this is the town and it is all that exists, and Fillmore will never leave her.Everyone is better.





	Your Wonderful Life

"There could be side effects," she says. She's a car. Fancy one. 

"So if you feel anything out of the ordinary--"

Blue.

"--Lightning? Are you--"

Doctor?

"If you feel anything out of the ordinary, you need to tell--"

Green. Greengreengreen. Cold start. 5500rpm, 6000. No power to wheels. No axle?

"Stickers--"

No axle. Still, just go. Get gone. Ge  
t

gon

_e_

\--

The road needs to be repaved again. That's the first thing Lightning notices when he gets back to town. It's old and bleached and pieces of it fleck off as he drives, raising hell as gravel clatters against his wheels. His drivetrain gives a nauseous lurch at the idea of Bessie, the memory of ripping through the air, all at once. His mind loses traction and it's a second, another, before Lightning can understand that his tires haven't.

 _All new parts on top of an ECU reset,_ the doctor had said. _It might take some time to come back._

Lightning's ready to throw up on the side of the road. But then comes Mater, bounding through the scrub sage--tow hook tilting jovially at twelve different windmills, probably. He hollers, "Well, howdy, stranger!"

So Lightning gathers himself, tries to push down the nausea, and shouts, "Mater!"

If it's shaky, Mater gives no indication. He stops an inch shy of Lightning's face before laying back on his rear axle. "Well, I'll be. Guess my reputation's started precedin' me, like Sheriff's always sayin' will happen. Mater, at yer service! What's your name?"

"You don't know my name?" Lightning says before he can stop himself. But if this is one of Mater's weird games, Lightning can't play it. Not right now. He feels like there's a knot in his tongue and froth between his gears and he is very, very--nervous?

It's like that tenth of second right before the green flag drops, but never-ending. But he's just talking to Mater. He's just coming home.

In the distance, he sees Sally. She smiles at him and comes running, for which Lightning is endlessly grateful. She hasn't even stopped moving before Lightning realizes how tired she looks. Then he feels guilty. There's a spot of oxidation starting on her hood she hasn't taken the time to fix, and her headlights are going hazy.

"Sal--" he starts, but she's already talking.

"--Gateway to Ornament Valley, known for its friendly hospitality! And what brings you here today?"

"Sally?"

Her smile falters. "What?"

So does Lightning's. "Sally, it's me?"

Sally doesn't ask him who he is, how she knows his name. She asks, "How did you get here?" Which is really the same thing, because there's that surge again--that green flag panic, stretched and heavy and awful. Because he doesn't know.

He doesn't know how he got here. Why Sally wasn't with him. Whether Mack exists at all. Whether he--

\--

He wakes up crying. The room is bright and refractive and he can't see anything. Sound exists only in static and percussion, the chirp of spun bearings and the silent scream of his own panic.

When he finally pieces Sally together in front of him, he just cries more.

What's wrong? she asks him. She asks it over and over again. He can't answer. Maybe doesn't remember. How can I help you? she asks. Are you in pain?

Every time he looks at her, Lightning feels like it's the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He doesn't know why.

Finally, she asks, _Why is he scared of me?_

"The drugs have that effect sometimes," says a doctor, right before giving him more.

\--

They don't know him here. No one does.

Mater lost interest in him after the first day, but Sally's told him a little about the town. It's living out its death rattle, but Sally is holding it together. She's been the heart of the town ever since Doc died.

Doc's still dead, by the way. They tried to call a medic up from Phoenix when Doc took ill, but the medic couldn't find the town. It's not in the GPS.

"Are you happy?" Lightning asks her once, and she says yes. She is living her dream.

"Are you lonely?" he asks. But she's not.

Flo and Ramone left town about ten years back, when business got too slow. Ramone took a graphic design job with a company called Nitroade and Flo works at a Dinoco in Tempe. They come back to visit from time to time, though, bringing gas for the old V8 Cafe pump and news from beyond. Radiator Springs stopped being able to afford satellite long ago, and the airwaves developed around but not for them. It's isolating.

But Sally is happy. This, Lightning can tell. She is confident and beautiful and tired but she laughs harder than he has ever heard her laugh, a silhouette cut from rosy light inside Fillmore's tent, where they all have gathered. She is all those things, without him.

Lightning doesn't join, because he can't move. Is, in fact, stuck in the middle of their jagged road. Sedated. No one seems to have noticed, though. Even the townsfolk who greet him. It's like they know he doesn't really exist.

When they come out from the tent, great billows of smoke come out with them, and a grassy pungent smell. Sally and Fillmore come out driving hub to hub. 

Then she kisses him, right on his peace sign.

 _Could be something, but maybe nothing,_ Sally tells Lightning a few days later. _This is the desert. Love is a little different here._

She doesn't have the Wheel Well. She doesn't have her town--not as Lightning knows it. But Sally has it as she knows it, and she will always love it. She's happy.

Sally's not the kind of woman who's willing to waste time missing things she never had.

\--

"Kill me. Just kill me," Lightning pleads. He's been saying it for a while. So long Sally's not sure if it means less now, or more. If she's inured to it or if she's starting to believe him. That's what she tells him, point blank.

"I'm not going to kill you. No one's going to kill you," she says.

 _Killmekillmekillme,_ Lightning repeats. Every syllable feels light and warm and reassuring. Say it feels like the only possible thing that will make things better. 

"You won't miss me if I don't exist. You won't--"

"I'm pretty sure I will," says Sally. "Because you do. You do exist."

It's her very best courtroom voice. But then the car in the room that's crying isn't Lightning. It's her.

She needs some air.

 _It's the drugs,_ the doctor reminds her. This combination of sedatives and painkillers--it has this effect sometimes. But they need the sedatives: At this point, Lightning's caused more damage redlining things he shouldn't even be able to move yet than any damage the initial crash had caused. And the painkillers, well. He shouldn't be in pain.

"How is this different than pain?" asks Sally. "He wants to _die_."

"He doesn't," says the doctor. "That's just the drugs talking."

"Kill me," says Lightning.

\--

The Piston Cup is flagging. Lightning asked Ramone about the job with Nitroade. It's aaight, as far as Ramone's concerned. Corporate stuffs not usually his flavor, but the Cup's loosened its collar a lot in the last decade, is more open to Ramone's flair. Goin' more old school. Might try a dirt race come 2020.

See, viewership crashed after The King retired, and the Cup realized its mistake in not grooming new talent to take up the mantel. Intermediate tracks are under the knife--Bob Cutlass is out at the Cup, is now covering competitive cornholing in Iowa. But Ramone doesn't pay too much attention to that stuff.

"Who's racing for Nitroade?" Lightning asks him.

"Shoot, you're asking me?" replies Ramone.

"Well, who won this year?"

Ramone shrugs. "Not us. Had some nice banquet wraps laid out just in case. Probably that Dinoco kid, as usual."

Lightning's heart lurches. Cal, who won the Cup, instead of retiring mid-season. Cal, who won the Cup, "as usual." Cal, in this Lightning-less world, who probably didn't need to shrug it off when a news outlet compared him unfavorably to his uncle. Who didn't need to listen to Lightning and Bobby rant when Cal was compared unfavorably to both his uncle _and_ the two of them. Cal, who in this scenario probably still has Bobby. Cal and Bobby had been friends with each other before him, anyway. Lightning hadn't made friends until after Doc died.

 _Everyone is fine without you,_ Lightning realizes. 

Everything is different, but that's all it is. Just different.

No. Not just different.

Sally's in the tent with Fillmore again, smoke curling out from the bottom. They're together every night, because Fillmore is here every night, because this is the town and it is all that exists, and Fillmore will never leave her.

_Everyone is better._

\--

It's nighttime, or so Sally says. The world is as glassy and blindingly bright as always, like he's parked in the middle of a chandelier. 

"I think I've been dreaming."

"Oh?" says Sally. She can't keep the relief from her voice, and Lightning hates that, because all he said was once sentence--one normal sentence--and she's so afraid to be excited about it because--Lightning's not sure, because. "Dreaming about what?" she asks.

"You," he replies.

He feels a little pressure at his wheel. Smells hookah and the desert at dusk, pavement still warm just after the sun goes down. He doesn't know why.

Sally kisses him, and Lightning shudders.

Sally draws back.

"Good dreams?" she asks, after a moment.

"No."

\--

After they wean him off the sedative, it takes Lightning longer than expected to remember how to move. The first few days, he barely remembers how to breathe. 

The specialist gets concerned. Especially since Lightning had been _so_ lively early into his hospitalization, they'd thought-- And they'd thought full recovery had been on the table, maybe. But then, that's why he'd needed all the drugs. Sometimes to get better, you need to get worse, says the doctor.

"I hope you only say that when you actually know for sure they're going to get better," snaps Sally. 

Lightning does get better.

He passes all his physical exams with flying colors. The Piston Cup has its own tests, and doubtless his team has their own requirements, allows the doctor, but _you_ sir--and he smiles at Lightning. "You have a clean bill of health!"

"But he's not okay," objects Sally. 

Lightning hasn't said much, just a mumble here or there about dreams he does not remember. But he feels like he's dying. If he'd started on one side of the green flag, now he's on the other--he is past the tenth of a second of fear, and onto the tenth of a second directly after, where you feel nothing at all. Dead calm. A floating sense of impossibility, right before you hook up and you are speed. You are force. You are detonation.

That part never comes. It's just floating.

 _His system needs to learn to adapt without the drugs,_ says the doctor. _Take him for a drive. Let his wiring sort itself out._

The doctor assures Sally that he does not believe Mr. McQueen is a danger to himself or others. They're free to go home.

"But he's not okay," says Sally. 

And he doesn't want to go home.

\--

They don't go home.

They go for their drive, doctor-prescribed and not particularly scenic, and Lightning says, "Sally, if I said anything--" and Sally assures him he didn't, and she loves him, he says "I love you, too" and then they don't say anything at all until Lightning asks her if she's ever smoked pot. 

"Excuse me?" says Sally, but she doesn't answer, and they go back to not saying anything at all. That is, until Lightning unceremoniously hacks up oil and coolant, and they're back at the hospital, and it feels like they'll be back at the hospital forever, and they'll never leave, and Lightning will be forever stuck in that tenth of a second after the flag, always floating but never getting further.

 _Faulty gasket. Little part, big problem. Easy fix!_ says the doctor.

"No drugs," says Sally.

"Miss," says the doctor, suddenly very serious. "You don't pull an engine without them."

But don't worry. This is routine. Racecars have this procedure done almost every week. Don't worry.

You are out of the woods.

\--

And back in the desert.

Radiator Springs is fine without him. The Piston Cup is fine. Sally is fine.

Sally is happy.

He doesn't even exist, but the world spins madly on. Doc had always lectured him about humility, but Lightning hopes this hadn't been what Doc had had in mind. Lightning thinks he'd probably want to die, but since he already doesn't exist, he can't imagine that would help much.

Once, he'd asked Sally if he could come smoke with her and Fillmore, just to have something to say to her. Lightning's pretty sure it's the last thing he's ever wanted to actually do.

Sally had said yes, but after she'd gone about her business and he'd passed out of eyesight, she'd forgotten him. She'd forgotten he can't move. So instead, he sits and stares at Stanley, similarly stationary, on the other side of town. He listens to Sally living her life without him.

He sits under the stoplight and counts its yellow blinks. The third one isn't slower.

He wonders if Willy's Butte is as he'd known it still. Probably. Rocks and dirt don't care that much whether you exist or not. They don't care if you make the turn, or if your tires break free and you go spinning into the cacti. That's what he'd come to love about it--the battle between you and the track, your will against centrifugal science. It's there on asphalt and concrete, but the battle was always more wily on dirt. He'd loved that.

He wants that.

He wants to see Radiator Springs bright with neon, and everyone in town. He wants to race. He wants Sally to look at him the way he's afraid to look at her--at least in this world, this Sally-Fillmore world where Lightning McQueen never destroyed the world, never fell in love, never changed the world--but did not, _necessarily_ , improve it. 

So what if he doesn't improve anything? He still wants to be there for it.

He wants to feel the dirt under his tires, the air off the next guy. The cushion at the wall, creating that slipstream at the high line. He wants to beat Cal for the Piston Cup--multiple times. He wants to be the first one to congratulate Cal the year he doesn't. He wants to make Doc angry. He wants to make Doc proud. He want to be there when Doc dies. He wants to be there to mourn him. Lightning wants to hear Sally laugh, and be the one that caused it. He wants her to be happy, but he wants her to be happy with him. He wants to be happy.

He wants to exist.

But when the sun comes up and Mater's brought a whole field of tractors into town and Sheriff is yelling and Hendrix is singing and Sally emerges from Fillmore's tent with flowers braided around her side mirrors, he still doesn't.

\--

"Hey there, stranger," says Sally. Lightning feels his eyes go panic-wide. 

Then she says, "I love you." They're in the hospital. She knows who he is.

Sally knows, maybe too well, who he is.

"How're you feeling?" she asks.

"Selfish," says Lightning. 

Sally quirks a brow, but suddenly Lightning feels like it would sound stupid to explain why. To explain that even if the world doesn't come crashing down without him, he still wants to live in it. He wants to be in love with Sally. He wants it all. Maybe they'll laugh about this one day, with Fillmore and Flo and Ramone and all the others, but the dream is already fading away. He can't remember the details. Just the terror. All he can muster is, "I want to be here."

Sally looks around, at the white walls. The SOLUS scan tool, still hooked up, reading out data on the most recent of Lightning's brand new engines. The harsh lights and the smell of brake clean. 

"Weird choice, but okay," she says. "I guess hospitals do have a sort of chic, high-tech IKEA vibe."

Then, softer: "I want you here, too. That's all I want. For really, really selfish reasons, Lightning."

She's going to cry.

"Sally, I am so--"

"--here," Sally interrupts. "You are so here. I think we can work with that."

\--

It's hard work. But Lightning wouldn't miss it for any other world.


End file.
